


love & nutmeg

by seasparks



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Bad Cooking, Cooking, Edelgard just constantly getting owned, Food, Gen, canonically Edelgard and Byleth are better at cooking than this but we couldn't help it, references to sex but nothing actually lewd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:00:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22823719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seasparks/pseuds/seasparks
Summary: Bernadetta sees Byleth eating a questionable lunch and offers to teach her & Edelgard how to cook. Before she knows it, she's in way over her head. Can she find a way to teach the imperial couple how to cook?
Relationships: Dorothea Arnault/Petra Macneary/Bernadetta von Varley, Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 8
Kudos: 83





	love & nutmeg

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by a tweet (https://twitter.com/soggystyrofoam/status/1230535070441586688) and a short conversation we had with a friend about it. It was supposed to just be a super tiny microfic, but it quickly got out of hand and turned into, uh *waves hands* Whatever This Is.

Bernadetta stared down at the misshapen glob in front of her. "What am I looking at, Professor?" It looked like someone had gone to the river, scooped up some mud, and put it in a box. The only thing allowing her to keep her composure was how it sort of looked like soil she had used in the greenhouse.

Sort of.

"Lunch." Byleth's matter-of-fact reply only unsettled Bernadetta even more.

"Lunch? Are you sure it's, um...edible?" ventured Bernadetta.

Byleth scooped a dollop of the substance (for lack of a better term) onto her finger, then put her finger in her mouth. "Mmhmm," she said with a nod.

Unconvinced, Bernadetta pressed on. "What does it taste like? I-if I'm not prying! I hope I'm not bothering you, sorry!" She had made great progress on her anxiety since the war ended, but it still manifested in small ways sometimes. Apparently interrogating Byleth about her lunch-goop was one of those times.

Byleth swallowed, then tilted their head, deep in thought. "Have you ever tasted dry tea leaves after you've made tea with them?" Bernadetta shook her head. "Well, it tastes kind of like that, but with nutmeg. Actually, mostly nutmeg."

Bernadetta couldn't stop herself from asking the burning question in her mind. "Why?"

"Probably because there's nutmeg in it."

"No, I mean why do you eat it? It sounds almost as disgusting as it looks!"

"El made it." Byleth's face lit up just from mentioning her wife's nickname. "She makes my lunch for me, and that means it's delicious."

"That's not how food works, Professor! Okay actually it's very sweet and you two are adorable together but this, I don't know, nutmeg casserole is horrifying! Please, Byleth," Bernadetta pleaded, "let me come over and teach you both how to cook. Dorothea and Petra say I'm a great teacher!" She blushed at the memory of her girlfriends' praise.

Byleth nodded. "Are you free now?"

"U-um, yeah! I mean, if you are? Don't you have important empress things to be doing?"

"Not right now, no," said Byleth. "I know El doesn't have work to do today, but she doesn't like to have sex during work days, so we should both be free."

Bernadetta blushed. "That's not what I meant, Professor! I didn't need to know that about you! But, um, sure. Let's go, I guess?"

* * *

The Eisner von Hresvelg household's kitchen looked pretty much like Bernadetta expected at first glance: a sink, a stove, an oven, some counter space, a reasonable assortment of cookware, and an unreasonable assortment of implements she assumed were for fish-related cooking. A closer investigation revealed some oddities, however, in the form of two familiar looking weapons hanging on the wall. 

"Are those...Aymr and the Sword of the Creator?" Bernadetta asked, incredulous. "What are they doing in the kitchen?"

"El finds it easier to cook with a sword or axe."

"For chopping things? They seem way too unwieldy for that!"

Byleth shrugged. "Just for cooking." It seemed that Bernadetta wasn't going to get any more detail than that.

"It's praxis," said a serious voice from the doorway. Edelgard was standing there, somehow projecting authority and power even while wearing cat & fish print pajamas. "My crests make me no better than anyone else, so neither should my relic weapon. By using it as a kitchen utensil, I tell the world that I do not need the help of a crest or relic in order to rule, and embody the principle that nobody, whether emperor or relic weapon, is above performing even the most menial tasks."

"I also can't use the Sword of the Creator any more," Byleth added helpfully. She walked over behind Edelgard and wrapped her arms around her wife.

Edelgard leaned into the embrace. "Exactly right, my teacher," she said, as if this was a profound revelation from Byleth. She looked at Bernadetta and smiled. "It is a delight to see you, Bernadetta. To what do we owe the pleasure?"

Before Bernadetta could answer, Byleth started explaining. "Bernadetta saw my lunch and offered to teach us how to cook, and since we won't be having sex until later I said she could come over now."

Edelgard's cheeks flared crimson, and and she turned around to face Byleth and try to hide her embarrassment. "Byleth! That's not something she needed to know about! We've talked about this before, my love; sex is not a topic one normally broaches with most people."

"But she's not most people," said a puzzled Byleth. "She's Bernadetta. And should your face really be there? I didn't think you wanted to—" Byleth barely caught herself before she mentioned sex and embarrassed her wife again. "—um, that is, I didn't drop any food down my cleavage when I was eating. Thank you for checking, though."

Edelgard quickly spun around and coughed, her face almost as red as Adrestia's flag. She regained control of the conversation the only way she knew how: abruptly changing the topic and speaking unnecessarily formally. "So, Bernadetta, you wanted to teach me how to cook something other than my nutmeg casserole? Splendid! I have been meaning to broaden my culinary horizons for quite some time, and this should be the perfect opportunity for it. Where shall we start?"

"Wait, is it seriously called—no, never mind." Bernadetta shook her head; this was not the time to discuss the taxonomy of culinary abominations. "I guess just show me what you have to work with and I'll figure out something from that?"

Byleth took a step forward, but Edelgard knew she couldn't cede control of the conversation again. "Most of our ingredients are in this cabinet here, or the refrigerator," she said, opening the doors in question. The contents of the cabinet were pretty normal, if somewhat sparse, including a few cans of different types of beans, a small collection of spices (including the largest jar of nutmeg Bernadetta had ever seen), an unopened jar of olives, and most of a bag of rice. The refrigerator, on the other hand...

"Umm...what happened to all the jars in here?" Bernadetta asked. Every jar she saw was roughly the bottom two-thirds of a jar with some plastic wrap over the top held on with a rubber band. "Did a new spell of Constance's backfire or something?"

"Oh, no, that's..." Edelgard looked embarrassed again. "Well, Byleth has trouble opening jars ever since she lost her crest, and the last time I tried to open one it shattered in my hand and we had to call Linhardt over to take care of it, so instead I just...oh, here, it's better if I demonstrate." She took the fully-intact jar of olives from the pantry and put it on the counter, then walked over to Aymr and hefted it onto her shoulder. "You may want to stand back, Bernadetta." With a mighty bellow, Edelgard swung Aymr at the jar. Despite the magical axe's size, it managed to shear off the top third of the jar, sending olives flying everywhere. Bernadetta noticed that the garbage bin was placed strategically so that the still-intact bit of the jar she sent flying landed directly in it.

"Wow. That was..." Bernadetta grasped for words. "Terrifying. And impressive! I'm amazed that you can even _do_ that with an axe!" Edelgard beamed at the praise. "Anyway, now that I have a better idea of what we're working with, I need to know: what all have the two of you made before?"

"Nutmeg casserole and frozen pizza," said Edelgard.

"I tried to make toast once, but it caught on fire," said Byleth.

"And rice, too, right?" asked Bernadetta. "I saw you had some in the cabinet."

Byleth shook her head. "I bought some, but there's something wrong with it. It's all...crunchy."

"Huh, that's strange. I know it can get crunchy if you leave it out for a while, but freshly-cooked rice should be soft. Are you sure you boiled it for long enough?"

"Boiled?" the emperor and empress asked in unison.

Bernadetta sighed and shook her head. This was going to be harder than she thought. "Okay, let's start with the basics. To boil water, first fill a pot with water—no, that's a skillet, not a pot, Edelgard." Much, much harder.

  



End file.
